


i know you're scared tonight, i'll never leave your side

by r1ker



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 11:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7434342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATE I LOVE YOU</p></blockquote>





	i know you're scared tonight, i'll never leave your side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pansaralance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pansaralance/gifts).



"You need to go to sleep."

 

Adam barely hears what Lawrence says and lets his head lean a little bit heavier on his hand. Since he's been awake after what could have been days spent in a drugged sleep words take a little while to be taken in and processed. He's processing several things right now, the warm, long sleeves of his shirt, even the give of the bed beneath him as he sits on top of it with his legs crossed. Lawrence isn't far away wearing pajamas of his own, close to Adam's level of exhaustion but with enough cohesion to attempt and outlast him.

 

"I'm not tired," he outright lies on the tail end of a hard yawn. Sleeping for days seems to have only added to the haggardness. Woken up long enough to eat and redress he wants more than anything to go back under, but isn't quite sure what's going to be waiting for him if and when he does. Just to give into Lawrence's unrelenting and pleading look he falls back with his legs still folded up.

 

Lawrence moves to sit high on the bed close to where Adam's head rests half on a pillow. He pulls the sheets down and throws a few of them across Adam's legs, doesn't urge him any further beneath if he doesn't want to. The lamp next to the bed has a little dial that Lawrence turns just enough to the right to where the room is softly lit, but in no way pitch black. He toes off his shoes and kicks back. If he falls asleep here then so be it.

 

Adam's eyes keep drifting shut only to ease back open when something in the apartment rumbles, be it the furnace or the rattle of the water in the pipes. Lawrence doesn't let him know it's alright to be still but he stays close, doesn't move back when Adam flinches, feeling Lawrence's leg against his. "Close your eyes. Go to sleep." They lie next to each other for a few more minutes and Lawrence fights the urge to pass out by reading a book. Meanwhile, Adam's long gone, as the night outside grows heavier.

 

Soon the deep sleep turns into tossing and turning, lying on his belly only to be resting on his side facing away from Lawrence. There's a lot to be said about what he could be dreaming about but neither one wants to address it. Soon it's one of Lawrence's hands not quite resting on the top of Adam's head, soft enough to feel the slip of freshly washed hair between his fingers. He presses down to the warm feel of Adam's scalp, doesn't get blood coming up when he starts carding through his hair.

 

"Class 3 hemorrhage is when someone's lost 30 to 40 percent of their blood," Lawrence begins to explain for really no reason at all. He wants to hear it said rather than read it as blurred words on a sheet of paper. The team he'd brought in – rather, held against their partial will to bring what was left of Adam back – had said another day, another night even, he'd have been gone for good.

 

Good thing, they'd said ( _Christ, what part of this is good_ , Lawrence had thought, still aching from his own injuries) he'd fallen on his shoulder; it had helped to compact some of the blood loss. Didn't really help stop the pool of vomit and sweat they'd found Adam in just as soon as they'd gone back, right after Lawrence was stabilized. "Your chest hurt because your heart was trying to make up for lost time, lost blood, really. Your head was light because your cells were running out of oxygen. Infection set in on the twelfth hour. Fast because there hadn't been any containment of the wound, serious because of, well, it was a goddamn bathroom. They cut away what they could to save the arm; after a while we were getting ready to start prepping for amputation. I knew we could save it. Didn't know it was going to cost you most of the movement, sensation in it." He stops, finds it a little hard to breathe seeing Adam in profile like this, gaunt cheek offset by a gentle sweep of eyelashes guarding a closed eye. "And I'm sorry."

 

"I shot you in the fucking shoulder and all I have to say is 'I'm sorry,'" Lawrence says, a bit more incredulously this time. He looks down, sees his ankle still wrapped in layers upon layers of gauze, sterile cloth. "And I chopped off my own foot." He's laughing at that, can't believe himself, and the, what, fifteen damn years of medical school for not breaking the bones enough to slip it through the chain. All he could think about, feeling it leave his body, was how maddeningly close he was to freedom, crossing the bathroom floor to get to Adam before it was too late.

 

"God won't forgive me. Hopefully, you will – in your own time, on your own terms, maybe in the same space as me. For now, sleep." He leans over the mound of pillows keeping them in an awkward angle on the bed, still leaves the light faintly turned on. Within seconds of reclining in the promise of rest he's back up again, chest gripped tight. Adam's resettled against him, his chin high on Lawrence's collarbone. The shoulder that's been mangled is pillowed carefully between them both without either having a say in how they position their bodies, having found a way with which to fit and situate.

 

Morning comes and Adam's the first awake. If not for the massive ache of his shoulder for the heavy sounds of Lawrence's breathing as he's finally stopped eluding sleep. Face ruddy from the heat mounds of blankets have cast on them both, blond hair mashed against the pillow, Adam's in disbelief of him. Of them both, really. How they took a fucking travesty and turned it into this morning-after-esque shit.

 

He should be back in his apartment seeing how long he can go without changing bandages on fresh sutures. Drinking enough orange juice to where he won't have scurvy for a century, reading that it's good for those who are healing. Granted, from a near-death experience and not the common flu. He's healing from the obvious gouge in his shoulder and the muscle weakness basic shoulder reconstruction has given him. From almost drowning in a filthy bathtub, shot by the guy he's currently sleeping on.

 

Come to think of it, that guy is sleeping pretty damn well for leaving a bathroom minus one foot. Adam fucks with him a little, sticks a finger under his nose to feel the air flow when it becomes all too apparent he could be dead rather than sleeping hard. He laughs, a breathy little sound that's almost too relaxed to be anything more than an exhale. One of his fingers trails over the bridge of Lawrence's nose, not hard enough to wake him up but not light enough to tickle. A palm over the concavity of Lawrence's breastbone beneath his thin, blue t-shirt. Then two fingers to the thrum of his pulse under the sharp line of his jaw.

 

They'll be fine. For now.

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATE I LOVE YOU


End file.
